IT WAS a charity supported by thousands of Oxfordshire factory workers.

Many will recall having a penny deducted from their weekly pay packets to supply vital equipment to local hospitals.

Since 1964, thanks to them and other wellwishers, the Oxford Hospital Services Development Trust has contributed £1.3m to health care and medical research in the county.

Now, after almost half a century, in which it has made more than 350 grants, the charity is closing its books.

In the early days, much of its income came from ‘give-as-you-earn’ schemes at local businesses.

David Buckle (wearing a red tie in photo), former Oxford district secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, who joined the charity in 1967, was the driving force behind these schemes.

He persuaded workers at the Cowley car factories, Smith’s Industries, the Witney blanket mills and elsewhere to pay a penny every week to the charity.

With 28,000 workers at Cowley at one stage, this amounted to a significant sum.

The penny donation, in old money, was later increased to threepence, and there were some raised eyebrows when it went up 60 per cent to 2p with the arrival of decimal currency. But the money continued to roll in.

Apart from the workers’ donations, the charity’s funds were boosted by investments, covenants and bequests.

Over the years, it has provided money for a sensory garden and patient room at the John Radcliffe Hospital, special wheelchairs, pulse oximeters for cardiac patients, nerve stimulators for pain relief as well as more complex items of equipment.

Chairman Tim Pocock tells me: “We have spent money on an enormous variety of bits of kit not catered for in NHS budgets.”

A farewell lunch was held at the Thames Four Pillars Hotel at Sandford-on-Thames to mark the closure of the organisation which, in recent years, had renamed itself the Oxford Hospitals Services Charity.

Mr Pocock said: “This is a sad day, but there is much to celebrate after almost 50 years of successfully raising funds and making significant improvements in many areas of health care in Oxfordshire. We and our predecessors have much to be proud of.

“Our ability to raise funds through the ‘give-as-you-earn’ schemes and other methods has diminished and the charity has reached a natural end, even though the demand for its services is as great as ever.”

He paid tribute to past and present trustees and officers, particularly Mr Buckle who, he said, had been an inspirational leader as chairman from 1987 to 2006.

The charity’s final donation of about £200,000, the largest in its history, has been used to create a music studio – called the David Buckle Music Suite – for young mental health patients at the Warneford Hospital at Headington.

Its remaining funds will be given to the studio to be held in reserve for future maintenance.